Reports Shows U Of Missouri Lacking In Tenure, Salaries

A new report on the Chronicle of Higher Education's website paints an unflattering profile of the University of Missouri.

Perhaps most striking is the table that shows 33 percent of MU faculty members are tenured or on the tenure track. When compared to the 35 other four-year public universities with more than 2,000 faculty members, MU is fifth from the bottom.

But the numbers are misleading, Deputy Provost Ken Dean said. Unlike other universities, MU reports Extension employees, post-doctorate instructors and those who teach in off-campus training programs as "faculty members," inflating the total and skewing the percentage. The number, Dean said, includes titles that other universities don't include.

Not counting those groups, the percentage of faculty with or on the way to getting tenure is about 50 percent, Dean said. But he acknowledged definitions don't matter to outsiders looking at MU's profile on the Chronicle site. "That's a problem for us," he said, adding that administrators plan to rethink the way they report faculty data.